


too cold to feel (but i know you're there)

by hawksonfire



Category: Marvel
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Deaf Clint Barton, Fluff, M/M, Matt Fraction-inspired Clint Barton, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:47:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28177890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hawksonfire/pseuds/hawksonfire
Summary: Clint’s been cold his whole life. He doesn’t mind, really, has learned to always keep a pair of gloves on him, even in the summer. He gets weird looks for it, but he stopped caring what people thought of him a long time ago. His apartment has always got spare blankets laying around, and his dresser is jam packed with thick pairs of socks.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton
Comments: 16
Kudos: 216
Collections: Winterhawk Wonderland - 2020 edition!





	too cold to feel (but i know you're there)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Trashcanakin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trashcanakin/gifts).



> for trashcanakin whose prompts were so great that I let out a squeal of joy when I saw them. I hope you enjoy! Happy holidays!

Clint’s been cold his whole life. He doesn’t mind, really, has learned to always keep a pair of gloves on him, even in the summer. He gets weird looks for it, but he stopped caring what people thought of him a long time ago. His apartment has always got spare blankets laying around, and his dresser is jam packed with thick pairs of socks.

When he’s a kid, he spends as much time out in the sunshine as possible because that little extra bit of warmth keeps his teeth from chattering. When he’s a teenager, he learns to warm his fingers before offering his hand to people, be it to shake or to hold, because he doesn’t like the look in their eyes when they touch his cold hands. Also, picking pockets is easier when your fingers aren’t ice cold.

When he’s an adult, he’s always got little heating packs on him. They go in his tac belt, at the bottom of his quiver, in his pockets - everywhere he can sneak one in, it goes. He gets weird looks from the equipment techs at SHIELD when he requests them pretty much every week, but once Coulson is assigned as his handler the looks stop and the heating packs become a standard part of his kit so he doesn’t have to make a special request every time.

He never brings it up to Coulson, never says thank you, but every time he uses one, there’s a little part of him that warms up, knowing that someone cared enough to pay attention. When he gets offered a room at Avengers Tower, he’s surprised to walk in and find a stack of blankets and a box of the heating packs sitting on his bed. 

“Uh, who-” he starts, before realizing that he’s talking to the air.

“Agent Coulson is to thank for those, Hawkeye,” a voice says. 

The _only_ reason Clint does not jump out a window, never to return, is because Stark had explained about his AI butler. Gerald? Jackson? “JARVIS, right?”

“That would be correct,” JARVIS says. “I do apologize if I startled you.”

Clint blinks. “Uh. Don’t worry about it?” He looks around, trying to spot a camera or something. “Can you see me?”

“Visual and audio monitoring is enabled on your floor, yes,” JARVIS responds. 

“Can you... not?” Clint winces. “I don’t mean to be rude-” Can you be rude to a robot? “-but I don’t like being watched.”

“I can disable visual and audio monitoring, and limit my presence on this floor to monitoring vital signs and activating when you say my name, if that is something you would prefer.”

“Uh, yeah. Do that. Thanks.”

“Of course, Hawkeye.”

Clint waits, but nothing else happens. He looks around, like he’ll be able to see a robot butler peeking around a corner, then sighs. Just like Stark to have an omnipresent robot butler with a British accent. He shivers briefly, like someone ran an icicle down his spine, and starts pulling the heating packs out of the box so he can stash them around this place.

Whatever he doesn’t find room for here, he’ll take to his place in Bed-Stuy. Mrs. Jaymen in 4C mentioned she had cold feet once - bad circulation - so she’ll probably appreciate these.

* * *

When SHIELD goes ass-up in a shitstorm of epic proportions, Clint’s first thought upon receiving the coded message from Tasha is ‘aw, heating packs, no’. Maybe not the _best_ reaction he could’ve had, but considering he was in the middle of a mission somewhere he’s not allowed to talk about and his cover was blown by the media coverage, he thinks it’s pretty reasonable.

When he finds his way back to DC after catching three flights in a row to get there as fast as he could, the first thing Tasha does when she sees him is throw a box at his head. 

He catches it, of course, and opens it up to find a year’s supply of the heating packs. He grins at her and blows a kiss. “Aw, you’re the best, sugar muffin.”

Steve looks between the two of them. “I didn’t realize you two were... involved.”

“Every night before bed and twice on Sundays,” Clint answers, wiggling his eyebrows. Tasha throws an apple at him.

“Ignore him, Steve,” she says. “He’s just grumpy because I didn’t call him.”

Clint sticks his tongue out at her. “Yeah, why _didn’t_ you call me? My mission wasn’t that important.” He’d never admit it, of course, but he’s a little hurt that she didn’t call him until after all the fighting was over.

“There wasn’t time,” Steve says. “You wouldn’t have gotten here fast enough.” He looks Clint in the eye. “It was my call. I ordered her not to.”

Clint manages to keep a straight face for all of three seconds before snorting. “No offence, Rogers, but the only reason she listened to your order is because it’s what she was going to do anyway.”

Steve looks at Natasha. She looks back at him, not an ounce of apology in her expression. “He’s not wrong,” she admits. “Besides, we had the Soldier to contend with.”

Steve scowls. “His name is Bucky, Nat, how many times do I have to say it?”

“As many times as I have to say he might not be Bucky anymore, Steve,” she counters. The two of them start bickering and Clint unwraps a granola bar as he looks on, amused. This sounds like an old argument. And then it clicks.

“Wait a minute. The Soldier as in the _Winter_ Soldier? And Bucky as in Bucky Barnes? They’re the same person?” He looks between them, granola bar hanging from his mouth. “How-”

“Cryofreeze,” Natasha says grimly. “Brainwashing.”

Clint shudders. “Don’t like that,” he mutters. “Is he alive?”

“Yes, and we’re going to find him,” Steve says firmly. “I’ve already got Tony looking for him with the SI satellites, and me and Sam are heading to a HYDRA base in Europe we think he might have been to.”

“Alright,” Clint says, catching Nat’s eye for half a second. “Where do you want me?”

“Could you stay in New York?” Steve asks. “Me and Bucky used to live there, after all, he might go back there. I don’t want him to be alone.”

Clint blinks. “Yeah, I can do that. I’m a great welcome wagon.” He’s also probably the only one who’ll be objective enough to decide whether or not to put Barnes down. Hopefully it won’t come to that. 

Steve brightens. “Great! I’ll get you a list of places he might go so you can check them out.”

Clint nods. “Sure, Steve.” Steve starts talking animatedly about his Bucky, and once again, Clint catches Natasha’s eye.

A silent understanding passes between them, born from years of working together and trusting each other. If Barnes shows up in New York, Steve’s not to know about it until they’re sure. What they’ll be sure of, Clint doesn’t know. 

But he supposes he’s going to find out.

* * *

There’s a spot that he likes to stand. When he’s out of cryo, when he’s waiting for orders, there’s a spot. It’s out of the way and no different than any other spot in the room.

Except that it’s warm. His enhanced senses can hear a faint humming coming through the thick stone wall. If he stands with his back pressed to the wall, there’s a barely perceptible change in the temperature surrounding him. 

It feels like the heat sinks into his bones, warms him up from the inside out. None of his handlers mind if he stands there, although he’s careful not to show a preference for that spot over any other. He stands there when given no other orders, which is rare, but he treasures every moment.

When he’s out on a mission, sometimes he’ll get lucky and the sun will be out when he’s outside. If there’s none of his handlers around, sometimes he’ll tilt his head up towards the sun and let its warmth bathe him for a moment. Just a moment, though, because he never knows who’s watching.

The first time he’s able to do it without fear of being caught, the first time he feels safe enough, _free_ enough, to stand in the sunshine with his eyes closed and his head tilted up, is after the helicarrier. After ~~StevieRogersTargetStevie~~ the blond man on the helicarrier makes something _crack_ in his head and in his heart.

He spends the next year collecting warm things like blankets, and when he discovers space heaters, his life is almost complete. 

He still struggles with nightmares, still has patches of time that disappear, but the sun and the space heater help. Sometimes he’ll get flashes of a body, someone cold next to him that just makes him all the warmer. He gets bits of blond hair and lots of purple, and sometimes there’s a dog.

He likes dogs.

It’s almost 15 months after the helicarrier when he finds himself back in New York. It’s not unexpected, really, he kind of realized he was heading there after he had that dream about staring up at a big tall building with a needle on top with a small blond boy next to him.

_Do you see how big it is, Stevie?_

_Yeah, Buck, it’s gonna be huge. Might even fit your huge ego._

He laughs to himself. Then stops. He’s never laughed before. Not that he can remember. Which isn’t saying much, but. He has that dream and then three days later, he’s in New York. He wanders around for a little while, petting all the dogs he can find (thirty-four, he counted) and drinking a ridiculous amount of coffee. 

And then one day, he wakes up in the apartment he’s been squatting in and decides that today, he’s going to check out a new dog park. It’s a deviation from his routine, and he doesn’t really know why he’s doing it, but he ends up halfway across the city in a small, well taken care of dog park at about ten in the morning. 

He’s standing near a bench, about to take a sip of his coffee when something slams into his legs and bounces off. He looks down to find a beautiful golden-haired dog staring up at him, panting. “Well, hello beautiful,” he says quietly. His voice is hoarse from disuse but the dog gets the gist, grinning a big doggy grin up at him.

“Lucky! Hey! What have I said about running off?” He looks up to see a blond man running towards him. He’s immediately hit with a wave of emotion, but when he sees the bright purple hearing aids behind the guy’s ear and how much taller he is, it dissipates. 

“He didn’t do any harm,” he says softly.

“Yeah, but I’m trying to teach him manners,” the blond says. “That’s Lucky. I’m Clint.” Clint holds out a hand.

He looks at it. “I’m... James. My name is James.” He reaches out and takes Clint’s hand, and the entire world clicks into place. “Oh,” he says.

“Oh,” Clint echoes, looking down at their clasped hands. “I’m Clint.”

James laughs. “You said that already.” There’s a pause, and then, “I like your name. And your dog.”

Clint looks back up at him, still holding his hand. “I think I’ve been looking for you my whole life.”

“Even when I didn’t know there was something missing, I was looking for you,” James responds. “But do me a favour?”

“Anything,” Clint vows. 

“Don’t tell Stevie. Not yet. Let’s get to know each other first.”

Clint blinks at him then gives a surprised little laugh. “Yeah. Yeah, I can do that. I want you all to myself for a little while anyway.”

James grins at him, the movement feeling foreign on his face. “I like the sound of that.”


End file.
